Freakonomics Radio

Updated: 25 Apr 2024 • 755 episodes
freakonomics.com

Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner uncovers the hidden side of everything. Why is it safer to fly in an airplane than drive a car? How do we decide whom to marry? Why is the media so full of bad news? Also: things you never knew you wanted to know about wolves, bananas, pollution, search engines, and the quirks of human behavior. Join the Freakonomics Radio Plus membership program for weekly member-only episodes of Freakonomics Radio. You’ll also get every show in our network without ads. To sign up, visit our show page on Apple Podcasts or go to freakonomics.com/plus.

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Justin Trudeau, facing record-low approval numbers, is doubling down on his progressive agenda. But he is so upbeat (and Canada-polite) that it’s easy to miss just how radical his vision is. Can he make it work?  SOURCE:Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.  RESOURCES:2024 Canadian Federal Budget."Canada to Set Fir

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So you want to help people? That’s great — but beware the law of unintended consequences. Three stories from the modern workplace.   SOURCES:Joshua Angrist, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Zoe Cullen, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.Marina Gertsberg, s

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The psychologist Daniel Kahneman — a Nobel laureate and the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow — recently died at age 90. Along with his collaborator Amos Tversky, he changed how we all think about decision-making. The journalist Michael Lewis told the Kahneman-Tversky story in a 2016 book called The Undoing Project. In

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People who are good at their jobs routinely get promoted into bigger jobs they’re bad at. We explain why firms keep producing incompetent managers — and why that’s unlikely to change.  SOURCES:Nick Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University.Katie Johnson, freelance data and analytics coach.Kelly Shue, profess

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Fareed Zakaria says yes. But it’s not just political revolution — it’s economic, technological, even emotional. He doesn’t offer easy solutions but he does offer some hope.  SOURCES:Fareed Zakaria, journalist and author.  RESOURCES:Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, by Fareed Zakaria (2

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The political debates over immigration can generate a lot of fuzzy facts. We wanted to test Americans’ knowledge — so, to wrap up our special series on immigration, we called some Freakonomics Radio listeners and quizzed them.  SOURCES:Zeke Hernandez, professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.  

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